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Poster:
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dead-head_Monte |
Date:
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Dec 23, 2009 11:31am |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: The Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength |
Grievance
we are killing ourselves | Strength
the guts to say so |
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— we must learn PEACE on Earth —
bring Our Troops home right now
US Representative Dennis Kucinich on Afghanistan War: “We’re Acting Like a Latter Day Version of the Roman Empire.” View this clip: As President Obama unveils his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, we speak with Ohio Congressmember Dennis Kucinich. “The United States is going deeper and deeper into debt,” says Kucinich. “We have money for Wall Street and money for war but we don’t have money for work…for healthcare. We have to start asking ourselves, ‘Why is it that war is a priority but the basic needs of people in this country are not?’”
West Point graduate, Vietnam Vet, Professor and Scholar Andrew Bacevich on Obama War Plan: “The President Has Drawn the Wrong Lessons From His Understanding of the History of War.” Andrew Bacevich has spoken to the US Congress about having it wrong on War. Andrew Bacevich, a retired colonel and a Vietnam war veteran who spent twenty-three years in the US Army, responds in this clip, to President Obama’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and the author of “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.”
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Poster:
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dead-head_Monte |
Date:
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Dec 24, 2009 6:19pm |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: The Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength |
Grievance
Your Employer now owns your ass
much more than Pig singin' Big Boss Man
this is a huge giveaway to the for-PROFIT insurance industry leeches
discussion today about what's in the Senate Version of the Health Insurance "reform" Bill.
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: (no relation to Joe Lieberman) There’s a lot of confusion among the public about how they’re going to be helped or hurt by the bill.
Very simply, people who have insurance right now are probably not going to see very much change from the bill. In fact, what they are going to see, as the years go on, are probably increasing premiums, and a lot more of the cost is going to be shoved onto them through high-deductible plans and co-payments and co-insurance that are probably quite high. So they’re not going to see a lot.
The people who will see some benefit from this bill are those who are uninsured right now. Some 47 million people are uninsured. This bill does not cover all of those 47 million people, including immigrants who are here illegally. What it will do is cover some portion of the uninsured, and that is still to be worked out between the House and the Senate, by giving them subsidies, paid for by taxpayers, to buy health insurance in the open market. And they will be able to do that through this gigantic shopping service, brokerage service, if you will, called the exchange, where a variety of policies will be offered.
There are so many questions, however, about the affordability for people who will get the subsidies, because there will always be somebody over the line who will not qualify for a subsidy and will have to buy insurance on their own, because there will be an individual mandate. And the mandate means that people who do not have coverage from an employer or through Medicare or Medicaid have to buy coverage from a private insurance company.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the penalty for not buying the insurance in the Senate version? And also, if you could talk a little bit about—wasn’t—the mandate issue was one of the big debating points between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the Democratic—
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —in the Democratic presidential primaries, with Obama opposing a mandate.
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Right. During the campaign, Hillary Clinton supported the individual mandate for everyone, and the President supported a mandate only for kids. He says we have to require coverage of kids, but not everybody else. So, obviously, somewhere along the line, the administration changed their position on this.
And so, you ask about the penalties. The penalties are not very steep. And the members of Congress knew that if they made those penalties too high, they would have a revolt on their hands. On the other hand, they’re not high enough, in some people’s view—surely the insurance companies’ view—to bring people into the risk pool to spread the risk. At its maximum, the penalty will be $750 several years from now. It starts out at about $95 and then grades up. The House penalties are somewhat different. So it will be very interesting to see what happens, whether people will just take the penalty, which is not very much, or do they buy an insurance policy which could cost them $15,000 a year for a family policy by then.
JUAN GONZALEZ: One of the—in terms of how the bill would affect the majority of the population, one of the things that you’ve written about that, I haven’t seen anywhere else, is this whole issue of how premiums will be affected by wellness programs and how insurance companies will use that to penalize certain employees. Could you talk about that?
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Yeah, that can happen. What’s written into the bill are incentives to encourage better health behavior, better cholesterol levels, lower body mass index, and so forth. So what’s going to happen is an employer can set certain targets, that you have to have a BMI, say, below twenty-six or twenty-five, whatever they decide, cholesterol will be lower than—
AMY GOODMAN: BMI being body mass index?
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Body mass index—cholesterol levels below x amount. And employees will have to check in, weigh in every year, so to speak, and those that don’t meet the targets very well may be penalized, in terms of the price of insurance. We see employers also—
JUAN GONZALEZ: And the individual employer would set this?
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Exactly.
JUAN GONZALEZ: So you’re going to have a whole industry of consultants just to get the employers—
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Right.
JUAN GONZALEZ: —to figure out the best way to determine how their employees will meet the criteria.
TRUDY LIEBERMAN: Right now, the employers can have a 20 percent differential in premiums between so-called healthy employees and unhealthy employees. That can go up to 30 percent in the bill, under the Senate bill, and up to 50 percent down the road, if the Secretary of HHS and other administration officials decide that’s what’s necessary.
The employers want the flexibility to penalize, if you will, or reward, depending on what side of the fence you’re on, healthy workers versus unhealthy workers. So those people who can’t meet those targets will be paying more premiums than people who can. So they can look forward to, again, as I said earlier, higher premiums down the road.
Strength
I don't see any!!! THIS BILL SUCKS
Practicing to 'not get sick' is Bull Shit!!!
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Poster:
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dead-head_Monte |
Date:
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Dec 25, 2009 9:30am |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: The Airing of Grievances and Feats of Strength |
Wendell Potter is an EXPERT.. Mr. Potter speaking to US Congress: The industry and its backers are using fear tactics, as they did in 1994, to tar a transparent and accountable, publicly accountable health care option as, quote, "government-run health care." What we have today, Mr. Chairman, is Wall Street-run health care that has proven itself an untrustworthy partner to its customers, to the doctors and hospitals who deliver care and to the state and federal governments that attempt to regulate it.
Profits before Patients - July 31, 2009
BILL MOYERS:
You worked for CIGNA 15 years and left last year.
WENDELL POTTER:
I did.
BILL MOYERS:
Were you pushed out?
WENDELL POTTER:
I was not. I left-- it was my decision to leave, and my decision to leave when I did.
BILL MOYERS:
Were you passed over for a promotion?
WENDELL POTTER:
Absolutely not. No.
BILL MOYERS:
Had you been well-paid and rewarded by the company?
WENDELL POTTER:
Very well-paid. And I, over the years, had many job opportunities, many bonuses, salary increases. So no, I was not. And in fact, there was no further place for me to go in the company. I was head of corporate communications and that was the ultimate P.R. job.
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